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To understand the problem of natural right, one must start, not from the "scientific" understanding of political things but from their "natural" understanding, i.e., from the way in which they present themselves in political life, in action, when they are our business, when we have to make decisions. This does not mean that political life necessarily knows of natural right. Natural right had to be discovered, and there was political life prior to that discovery. It means merely that political life in all its forms necessarily points toward natural right as an inevitable problem. Awareness of this problem is not older than political science but coeval with it. Hence a political life that does not know of the idea of natural is necessarily unaware of the possibility of political science and, indeed, of the possibility of science as such, just as a political life that is aware of the the possibility of sicence necessarily knows natural right as a problem.

Imagine that you've found a Republican. You know what they're called, but you don't know what that the definition of that kind of Republican is. Here's a PHP script to help you decipher it. Enjoy!

-dx

<?php

function gop_type_determine($observed_case) {

$definition = "Let's face it: this person is a Republican, and therefore an asshole. ";

switch ($observed_case) {

case "fundagelical":

$definition .= " This is a member of the Taleban, RSS/BJP, etc.who speaks English instead of Pashtu or Hindi and imputes mystical powers to Jesus instead of Mohammed. You can recognise this one because he selectively chooses verses from the Old Testament/Torah that explain the bigotries that his lizard brain produce. This Republican aspires to nothing higher than being able to tell Jesus that his daughter got a Home Ec degree from Liberty University when he's raptured. The only thing that would please him more would be if every non-white person were to somehow die at once.";

break ;

case "wingnut_catholic" :

$definition .= " This is a particularly screwy case, as unlike most other Republicans, the Wingnut Catholic has most likely read at least one book not sold at Walmart. Similar to the fundagelical, this Republican is terrified that somewhere, someone may be gay, and that this gay person is going about life enjoying himself at least as much as any other heterosexual person is. The thought of a gay person being happy is anathema to the wingnut Catholic. The thought of a gay person who isn't shrouded in years of psychic pain brings them psychic pain. To get to their goal of oppressing gays (and women,too, because they remind them of gays.) and make it sound like something other than the bigotry that it is, the Wingnut Catholic will usually invoke the history of anti-Catholicism in this country as proof that his bigotry should be socially acceptable. He will argue that because of bigotry against Catholics, they should be allowed to be bigoted against gays and women (See, 'Donohue, Bill'). Failing that, they will pull out the big gun: Aristotelian Natural Law. This will sound confusing and persuasive, and you'll frequently hear terms like 'objectively disordered'. There will also be references to 'three-legged squirrels'. This may sound persuasive till you remember that 1) From Aristotle's own mouth, we have it that all of this is dependent on his biology. Aristotle's biology has been empirically demonstrated to not work. 2) This is doctrine of the Catholic Church, and not by any means a philosophical consensus. 3) Therefore, you have to willingly buy into their flawed theory that is doctrine for their religion to be persuaded of it.";

break ;

case "corporatist" :

$definition .= " This is the classic case of the Republican. This person is the sort of person who believes that our democracy is imperfect, not because of millions of Americans who are shut out of voting, a legacy of federalism being used to oppress people, the hundreds of thousands who live in third world conditions, etc. No, this person's steely heart and resolve are only broken by the tragedy that ExxonMobil and Comcast are unable to govern freely, as these vicious proles keep using their government to pass laws. To the Corporatist, governments are only legitimate so long as they wage war on behalf of corporate interests. Anything that they do to protect citizens is Communism.";

break ;

case "teabagger" :

$definition .= " This is a new name for a classic Republican. In his most current incarnation as a Teabagger, this Republican genuinely believes that the greatest threat to America is the horde of homosexual illegal immigrants from Mexico crossing our borders to unplug our braindead ladies and adopt their children, and they know because Fox told them so. Moreover, these Mexicans will form a fifth column for our Kenyan born so-called President. The Teabagger also worries about spending if and only if it is not going to white people or corporations, and is completely incapable of recognising that every spending problem we have to day is because of Reagan and Bush.";

break ;

case "laffer_tard" :

$definition .= " This one is very similar to the Corporatist, but with a twist. The Laffer Tard believes in what you could call trickle down economics. What that means is that if you cut tax rates and give the rich welfare, as they walk up the hills to their mansions, some money may fall out of their pockets and trickle down the hills to where the poor live." ;

I was going to write a whole thing about this, but really, who's surprised? Is anyone surprised? Let's explore another dimension of this, though. What kind of jerk repeats the things that his lover said to him sub rosa to work colleagues while at work? I can totally imagine someone talking about these matters with friends, maybe even work friends, over a drink or eight after work, but, really, doing so at the office is a level or crudeness that I never expected.

I guess I shouldn't be shocked, and I actually feel sorry for the lobbyist in question, whose just had her most intimate discussions turned into a news story. This whole thing is an exercise in Republican hypocrisy, sure, but it's also illustrative of the incredible contempt that conservatives have for women. Who cares about how your mistress will feel if the affair becomes public? Who cares what that woman will feel like if knowledge of her bedroom behaviours and preferences becomes public? What does it matter compared to your right to brag about nailing a bitch to another dude?

I am not one of those people for whom the political message of some artistic object X is enough to ensure that I will enjoy it. I have heard, seen and read enough awful stuff whose political messages I would otherwise find quite reasonable that was just so abominably made and executed that I couldn't bring myself to do anything with it, and I frequently try to forget it. This leads me to the question that is probably on everyone's mind: why is it that Republicans seemingly have no artistic talents? Oh, sure, I know that they have a blog dedicated to proving that it's a vast liberal conspiracy to keep Republicans from succeeding in culture, but if you take a stroll over there, you'll quickly find out that it's because the very cream of their crop are just hideously untalented - I mean, awful.

Listening to their jokes reminds of looking at conservative Christian bumper stickers from my beloved Texas: you have to be so deep in the know on their culture and in-jokes for any of the references to make sense that they look stupid to anyone else, or, more frequently, there's absolutely no subtlety or wit to what they're doing. Case in point:

Does anyone in the world who has more than three teeth find this funny? How about this one? "If you want to get to heaven, turn right and go straight."

Now, beneath the fold, you'll find some competing examples of Democratic and Republican pop music. I've chosen to look at hiphop and rock music, as they're probably the two easiest forms in which one can express political ideas. Guess which ones suck.

Every Sunday morning and afternoon, I like to spend a few hours plunging deeply into Arts & Letters Daily. It's a great resource of articles about wonderful things that delight the mind, ranging from musicology to intellectual biography. Think of it as RealClearPolitics without the Republican editorial position: they skim the various academic journals, newspapers, blogs, etc. to find the most interesting materials pertaining to the humanities and fine arts. I've found several new magazines, journals and blogs to read by reading it, and I'd recommend it to anyone. Anyway, earlier today, I was reading along, and I came across an article from Commonweal Magazine describing the resurgence of religion as a phenomenon in the world, and I came across the best description of Republicans that I have ever come across:

Assured since the fall of the Soviet bloc that it could proceed with impunity to pursue its own global interests, the West overreached itself. Just when ideologies in general seemed to have packed up for good, the United States put them back on the agenda in the form of a peculiarly poisonous brand of neoconservatism. Like characters in some second-rate piece of science fiction, a small cabal of fanatical dogmatists occupied the White House and proceeded to execute their well-laid plans for world sovereignty. It was almost as bizarre as Scientologists taking over 10 Downing Street, or Da Vinci Code buffs patrolling the corridors of the Elysée Palace. The much-trumpeted Death of History, meaning that capitalism was now the only game in town, reflected the arrogance of the West’s project of global domination; and that aggressive project triggered a backlash in the form of radical Islam. [Emboldened by Dheeraj Chand]

I'm going to return to this at some other point (yeah, right), but I think that the most important thing about this description is not the fact that Republicans are crazy ideologues who can find any way to justify any thing that they do at any time (When Clinton was President, The Speaker of The House should have been more powerful. When Bush was President, The Speaker of The House had an obligation to pass the President's agenda. When Clinton was President, a war to defend ethnic minorities in the Balkans was unjustifiable. When Bush was President, any war, at any time, is the prototype of a just war. I can find a million more.), but the fact that they are finally being perceived by the population of the world as not the leaders of the other party, with a completely coherent and reasonable worldview, but as a completely insane group of cultists.

Given the ever declining numbers of people who identify as Republicans, this is entirely true. Anyone who still identifies as a Republican falls into one of the following categories:

He wears his party identification like a birthmark, and will not leave, no matter what. His loyalty to his views is tempered by his loyalty to the party, and he feels as if it is his obligation to reform the party from within. Such a person has quite a bit of honour, but is ultimately a useful idiot who gives this party cover. In recent years, this is someone like Lincoln Chafee.

He is a true believer in the "lost ideals" of the party. This is the person who believes that the "real" Republicans have been betrayed, and that while those pure ideals of Republicanism are what they agree with, the Republican Party as it currently is bears no resemblance to those pure ideals. Nonetheless, anything that these impure Republicans do is de fide better than anything that the Democrats would do. This is the sort of person who talks about how the 2006 and 2008 elections were lost over earmarking and spending. A great example of this person is Phil Kerpen.

He is the sort of lunatic who actually believes that the last demonstrated periods of Republican governance were grand. A great exampleof this sort of person can be found....well, on the Editorial Pages of The Wall St. Journal and on the subscription lists of Human Events and Wingnut Daily. Also, another point: anyone who has been a College Republican over the last eight years or is one now falls into this category.

He is the sort of single issue fantatical voter who is quite willing to screw over everyone else so long as he gets his result on his issue, be it paying less tax or having his industry unregulated. We all know people like this.

What is interesting to me is that not only is the size of each of these cohorts decreasing, the respectability of belonging to each one is disappearing, too. The country, at large, is rejecting these wingnuts and lunatics - you can no longer get away with saying, "Oh, I vote Republican because I think I shouldn't pay so much tax that I cannot buy my mistress her own condo." People who would have otherwise been sympathetic to (1) are more and more starting to look at them as fools, dupes or useful idiots, and the rest of them are either just purely despised or looked at as insane.

There are times when I look at what the Republican Party stands for today and I wonder how exactly it was that I was a Republican for so long. Of course, given that they've virtually lost people like me, it's unsurprising that people like this asshole at Red State are all that's left:

Americans voted for Obama in some part to elect the first “black” president - although Obama is mulatto. Beyond that, they seem to like him, but they also are not going to cut him all that much slack for more than a few more months. They want results.

So far as I know, there is absolutely no context in which the term "mulatto" is a neutral term. It most certainly is not a neutral term in American English.It is intended to be rude and demeaning, and to simultaneously convey contempt for President Obama due to the fact that he has non-white ancestry.

What kills me about this is that I'll bet coffee to bourbon that it wasn't consciously done - it's just that this guy's view of the world is one in which it's taken for granted that negroes are of inferior status, and thus, it makes perfect sense to have a system in which we measure how much white ancestry a person has. Gah. Someone else shoud take this up. I have yet to finish my second cup of coffee.